Author: jesslcooper

Where have I been? School. So much school, you guys. Currently it’s summer school that’s kicking my booty. Fortunately though, I’ve been able to spend some time being creative. It helps me to relax and feel great in a world where my degree is going to take forever.

I wanted to share that although I haven’t been good at all about sharing my work here, I have been putting things up over at the Basically Bare blog (where I am fortunate enough to be a part of the design team). This fabulous mini is up over there today. Find it here.

I have also been working (because apparently I have too much spare time) and spent last year as the president of the PTO at the elementary school (because I must be crazy).

I also made some huge changes in my diet a little over a year ago (in case I forgot to mention it) and that has been a real party 🙂 Not the kind of changes that have made me lose weight, but the kind where I feel better because I’m not eating the foods that were obviously making me sick. (I miss you, dairy products).

Anyway, head over to the blog and click on the label for my name and you can see all of the things I’ve made since the beginning of the year. There’s also a Facebook page you can check out (and support a small business).

The Xyron DT is posting some really cute projects that were made with Maya Road products this week and today is my day to share!

I made three things to share, and for one I have a tutorial. I’ll save that one for last.

If you don’t know anything about Maya Road, you should check them out. They have gorgeous trims, chipboard, stamps, embellishments…the list goes on. Everything they make is great on an altered item, layout or card and is also really affordable. They’ve been one of my favorite companies to buy from for years.

On to the projects!

This is a little canvas that I had in my stash and I decided that it would be fun to make a little project that would look cute in my guest room out of it and the Maya Road paper twine cording and this little resin bird embellishment.

I made a little cloud out of paper first that I ran through my Xyron 3″ Sticker Maker, then I misted in blue. After I took the sticker off I misted in golden yellow. I unwound some of the paper twine cording and formed branches out of it, and I attached them with Xyron Adhesive dots and trimmed any edges that hung over. I attached the bird in place with more dots and then tied some more twine around the whole canvas and made a bow on top.

Up Next…

For this I used a Maya Road tin for the base. First I added some Xyron magnet tape to the back (now it’s a faboo magnet), and then I inked some old school October Afternoon paper pieces to use as embellishments. (You could also use punches or die-cuts). The background piece is attached with some of my home-made foam adhesive, and everything else is attached with Xyron Adhesive Dots. How cute is that little Maya Road Antique Metal Rose? I love it! Easy peasy and it’s hanging on my bulletin board right now.

Lastly, I have a card with a tutorial for you!

I just thought that this paper twine cording would make a really pretty flower for the focus of a card and I love how it came out. You could easily make one with more petals in different sizes and layers, but this is how I made this one with the basic flower.

I had to unwind some of the cording first. This shows what it looks like before and after unwinding. It isn’t hard, just twist it in the opposite direction that its wrapped and gently pull it flat.

I didn’t use a pattern for the petals, but don’t be afraid. Fold your flattened cording in half and cut the petals out that way. You can keep one nearby so that you can work at getting them all close to the same size, but the wrinkles will hide a lot and the rest can be trimmed later.

I cut five petals and here they are.

Now, I skipped the part where I talk about covering the card base, but I’m sure you all have done that a million times. I prefer to use my Xyron 5″ Creative Station for that step.

Just start laying the cording down along the tape and trim the ends as you go.

When you’re finished you may notice some gaps, and that’s okay.

Just fix them by cutting some smaller pieces from your cording and sticking them to the tape in the gaps.

I decided to lay my flower out on the card first just to be sure of placement.

That was good because I attach the flower by placing the adhesive dot on the card first. If you don’t lay it out like I did, you may end up with a lot of overhang.

Start placing the petals on the dot, and go around the circle until they’re all attached.

Like so.

My sentiment was stamped on cardstock and cut out, and then I attached it with that Xyron Teresa Collins foam adhesive piece that you can see cut in half up there. That way the adhesive isn’t in the way of the strip of cording.

And it looks like that now. I thought the matching fuschia color was fun.

The last step is to attach a flower center. I used a big brown button.

Today is a REALLY good day for you, whether you already love checking out the deals on HSN for craft supplies and tools or if you’ve never even watched before (gasp!). It’s 24-hour craft day on HSN! I do love watching the channel and I have to tell you that they have some crazy deals. Be sure to stop by and check it out (maybe you’ll see Xyron’s super star Beth Kingston)!

Today I have some 3 Birds and Xyron projects to share with you. The kits that you can buy on HSN are HUGE and full of so much stuff that you’ll have plenty to keep you scrapping for a while. I made three things and I have a lot left to work with. A LOT. I also only added tools and things like ink and a pen to the projects I made so that you can see what I did without having to go out and buy additional embellishments. Let’s get started!

This kit come with full sheets of these stickers like the oval you see here. Also, the letter stickers, that adorable layered embellishment, etc. A stapler, a photo, a pen, my Xyron Adhesive Dots and some wavy-edge scissors are what I added to this project.

For this I covered a card base with some of the paper included and added a sticker strip, a stamped sentiment (on a piece of cardstock perfectly pre-cut to fit the stamp!), and some dimensional glittery flower stickers! I popped the sentiment up with some Teresa Collins foam adhesive.

This one is all based around that great center sticker. The problem is that I couldn’t get the “Everything is Awesome” song out of my head the whole time I was working on this thing. Again, I covered the card base with the included paper and added a sticker strip with pen dots above and below to add a little more detail. I cut the brown piece of paper from a piece with flowery edges that I wasn’t going to use and I rounded the corners to match the card base. The sticker is attached with some more Teresa Collins foam adhesive.

Well, that’s it for me right now. Be sure to head over to the Xyron Facebook page and blog to see whats’ going down this week. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more goodies for you! Thanks for coming by!

I have such a fun project to share with you all today! I have not been making as much crafty stuff over the last year, and I found that I was really missing making mini books. There’s something really satisfying about finishing a mini and either giving it as a gift or adding it to my little box of minis. actually, I have one or two that I use as decor too. They’re just a lot of fun.

I have worked with products from May Arts in the past and I am a fan. 🙂 I mean, a zillion different kinds of ribbons in every color you can imagine? You can’t go wrong. I used at least five different ribbons on this project and I also use ribbon on almost every card that I make. I actually want to make a card that coordinates with this gift for when I give it away, but I ran out of time for that. I’ll be sure to share it when its done.

Simple Stories is a company that I have been drooling over for quite a while, but hadn’t really worked with yet. When we were giving the options for this blog hop, I chose this adorable pack called Hello Baby. It isn’t necessarily girly or boyish, so it would be great for someone that isn’t going to find out whether they’re having a boy or girl ahead of time. Or for making a gift when you’re really excited and it’s too early for them to find out anyway 🙂

Now, I was given that paper set and the adorable ribbons you’ll see, but to those I added an album. The pink Sn@p binder. This comes with chipboard dividers, page protectors and some heavy cardstock pages. I also added an extra set of page protectors in the same assorted layouts that came with the binder.

Before we get to the photos (and there are a TON), let me talk a little about putting together an album like this:

The first thing I did was divide up my page protectors and cardstock pages. I had three dividers, so I made three piles. I mixed up the page protectors and pages and once I had them in an order that I liked I added them to the binder.

After everything was in I cut up my papers. Some of the ones in the kit are designed to be cut into sizes that match up with the sizes of the openings in the page protectors. I chose my favorites of these and slipped them into the page protectors (be sure to leave room for photos. It can’t all be about the cute paper).

The kit also came with 4×6″ transparencies. I slipped my favorite of these into the page protectors as well.

Once I had papers in place and I knew where the photos would need to go I cut up some plain copy paper in the sizes of the photos and labeled them so that the person that I’m giving the gift to knows what size the photos should be and where they’ll go in the album. In a pinch, those papers could be placed over the photos and you could trim around them with scissors. It’s pretty helpful for the recipient that doesn’t have a bunch of scrapbooking tools.

After all of that I altered and remade some of the cardstock pages. There were some in very neutral office style prints and there were some in a pink that was just a tad too bright for the album. If they could be covered (because only part of the page was bright) I cut strips and pieces and ran them through my Xyron machine to attach them. Others I made from scratch by cutting them from the paper that came in the kit. I used the original pages to help with lining up the holes that needed to be punched so that they would fit in the album.

With all the pages in place I added some embellishment. Ribbons, flowers, buttons, stickers and sequins. It can be hard to keep things simple, but it is important! The person you’re giving the gift to will need space to fit their photos in the album. I added some stickers to the outside of the page protectors so that they will add some embellishment and still be out of the way of the photos. I also embellished the chipboard dividers a little. Just because it’s cute.

The cover is last, but not least. Keep it simple so that the album can still fit neatly on a shelf or table.

To put this all together I used my Xyron 3″ Sticker Maker, my Xyron 1.5″ Sticker Maker, and my Xyron Adhesive Dots in both sizes. Add to that some scissors, foam tape, and a paper trimmer and you have a pretty small kit that you can use to make a pretty cute album. Did I mention that there are 52 pages in this bad boy where photos can be inserted or attached? Seriously. This thing went together so fast that I swear it took me longer to take and edit the dang photos of the album than it took to actually make it. 🙂

That’s it! Now let’s get to those pictures!

How perfect is that pink ribbon? I attached a piece along the divider with my Xyron 1.5″ Sticker Maker and then attached the bow with an adhesive dot. That way you get the bow to lay flat.

I also used some foam adhesive to attach some stickers over the paper that they matched. It draws the eye to the design and it’s just cute 🙂

Some photos will go behind these cute transparency pieces.

May Arts makes this adorable giant ric-rack in a lot of colors. Perfect for a baby album!

Anyway, that’s it! I am so glad that I got to make a mini-ish album, and it was so fun to make something girly. I have a friend that’s pregnant with twin girls right now and it is for her. Hopefully it’ll make it easy enough for her to get some photos organized because I know how crazy it is when you have two newborns in the house!

Be sure to stop by the Xyron Facebook page and blog for more info and the constant prize train! They are pretty dang good to us all.

I’m back! I’ll share a post with some pictures of the science-themed birthday party that we had this weekend for the twins. It was super crazy and a lot of fun, and I actually managed to take pictures this time! I had an issue with that for the Minecraft party we did in February. That was a major letdown once I realized it. Ugh.

Anyway, this week the Xyron DT is pairing up with Lawn Fawn and we each got to choose a stamp set. I am in love with the set I chose (called Summertime Charm) because I have a million ideas for cards and layouts that I can make with this one set. For today though, I have two cards and a tag to share with you. Check me out! 🙂

I wanted to use yellow on the card with this sentiment, and I love the way it looks with the blues in the papers and the embellishments. I didn’t even use the jar stamp on this card, but those sunny circle shapes and sentiment came together to make a pretty dang cute card. This is just one way you can use the heck out of a stamp set. Break up those pieces and use them in unexpected ways.

This tag was a fun and very quick little project. These are so handy for any gift, and don’t have to be specific to a birthday or housewarming. You can just have them ready to use. I stamped everything on patterned paper for this one because I wanted things like the strawberries to have texture. It’s an easy way to get that look without having to emboss or anything.

How long has it been since I mentioned that I like making pink cards because I don’t get to scrapbook with a lot of pink with all these boys in the house? Not long? I’m sure. I do say it all the time 🙂

I love this plaid paper (it was a Valentine’s Day paper one year) and pulling the blue and grey into the design is so pretty. I used the sentiment stamp, the jar stamp and the heart outline stamp on this one. A bow and a few sequins finish it up. I love how girly this is and I know it’ll come in really handy.

Having more free time because the semester is over is the best thing ever. I plan on doing a little cleaning in my scrap room this week (just kidding. It’ll take more than a little cleaning to get that dump ready to use again) so that I can spend more time in there.

Even though it is a huge mess, I managed to get in there and get some things made over the last week. The one I’m sharing today was so fun to make and there are a lot of places in the house where I could put it. I haven’t decided yet on a spot though.

I’ve had this shadowbox for a while, and when I saw this paper pack I knew that it would be perfect for it. The chalkboard look of this paper is fabulous, and the colors are so happy. I love it!

I just added a strip of the flowered paper using my Xyron High Tack adhesive dots, then one of the cards from the stack with some foam squares from the Teresa Collins adhesive kit. The flowers and buttons went on with some more dots, and that is it!

Those pre-printed cards are so fun for projects like this, I had a hard time deciding which to use!

Be sure to stop by the Xyron Facebook page this week, I know you like to see all the fab projects and win goodies! Have a great week!

Hello again peeps! I am soooo close to being done with the semester from H-E-double hockey sticks, and I can’t wait for finals to be finished. I have missed having some creative time, and being able to help out at the kids’ schools and just having time to not use my brain. I am all kinds of ready for my summer break 🙂

This week, Xyron teamed up with Paper Smooches. We were able to choose our stamp sets and dies, and I LOVE the one I picked. I got a matching set of Talk Bubbles stamps, and the Speech Bubbles dies. I am sure that you’ve heard me say this a lot, but I make a lot of thank you notes and also a lot of birthday cards. Those two are what I use the very most of. Those are the sentiments included with this set, so it is perfect for me. How about now we look at what I made with my stuff?

I combined some cork paper, a doily, flowers, buttons and trims with my stamped sentiment and die-cut shape for this girly birthday card. The die was cut out of a canvas fabric and I stamped the sentiment on there with Staz-On ink in black. I stuck with that black, white, grey and yellow color combo when I started adding my embellishments.

For this card, I went with a clean look. It’s really all about the sentiment/stamps. I used a lined scrapbook paper for a school look on this card. If you have kids, you might be worrying about end of the year gifts for teachers, and I thought that it would be nice to have some thank you cards made up that I could either write in myself or have my kids write in to thank their teachers for a great year. Quick and easy never hurts either!

For these little cards, I wanted to make another set that could be used for a quick thank you (I actually know that some of the teachers at the school keep a set of these on hand when they need to send a quick something home with a child that brought a gift to school). I used this adorable Die Cuts With a View stack called Chalk Art. I love the chalkboard-style finish of this paper and the colors are really bright and fun. I played those colors up with some Bazzill cardstock and colored inks. I also thought that the punch with the torn edge gave it more of a school style. I might make a few more quick sets of these to give as gifts.

Be sure to check things out over at the Paper Smooches web site, there are more amazing project ideas there! You’ll also want to check out the Xyron Facebook Page, there is always something happening over there!

I’ll be back soon with more projects! I have some fun things planned and I can’t wait to get back to crafting! See you soon!

Hello again! Man oh man. Have I learned a huge lesson about my limits this semester. Don’t ever let me talk myself into taking fourteen credit hours again. Life is not compatible with that much school. Ouch.

Anyway, this week Xyron has teamed up with Miss Kate’s Cuttables for a really fun and really cute blog hop!

Have you been to the site? Holy cuteness! I have a running wish list going, and you will too. 🙂 There are so many ideas and projects over there that you won’t know where to start with everything you want to make. And that’s a good thing! You can also check them out on the FaceBook page, and head over to the blog to see the whole hop in action.

We were given some different files to choose from and I decided to use this little piece of fabulous to make some St. Patrick’s Day decor for the house.

Now, I didn’t use everything in the set (obviously), but oh man. I could decorate every inch of this house if I wanted to 🙂 I actually used the four-leaf clovers to make my project. Those combined with some different green patterned papers from my stash, a wreath form, and my trusty Xyron added up to make this…

I did just use different sizes and papers for my shape, but the dimension the patterns and adhesives add make it really pretty to look at. I love the way this looks on my front door, but I don’t know if I want to leave it there or bring it inside so I can see it better. I don’t really use the front door that much 🙂

Let me tell you how I made this (it’s quick!):

I imported the SVG files into the software for my eCraft and set up a full sheet of shapes. Once I had things set up it was just a matter of sending it to the machine. I did this four times, for the four different papers I used.

Once I had all of my pieces out of the machine, I inked the edges with green ink to add some interest and definition. I wanted them to stand out against the wreath.

Next, I folded the leaves on each piece to give them some dimension.

My wreath is just a cheap little grapevine wreath that I spray painted white with some paint that I already had. I thought it would look good with the shamrocks and would be nice and fresh and springy 🙂

I was glad that I did, because I decided that I wanted the bottom to be the top and it was easy to flip everything because nothing was attached yet. Once you’ve decided how you want things to look, start attaching a layer of your largest size shapes. Use your Xyron High Tack Adhesive Dots.

Once you have your first layer on, fill in with some pieces attached with dimensional adhesive. I used foam dots from the Teresa Collins adhesive kit and some of my homemade foam adhesive to attach a layer of the biggest pieces over the first layer.

This way, some of your pieces will stand up and some will lay flatter to the wreath surface. Do this over for each size of your shapes. I did three sizes, so I did the largest, then the medium, then the smallest. I filled in as I went along and layered some pieces on top of each other.

I used hot glue to attach the ribbon to the wreath for hanging. Just flip the wreath over and glue the loop to the back side.

And that is it!

I even have some left over pieces that I think I’ll make a card or two with. (I always make extra things to work with later).

Once you start using die-cuts, you’ll be addicted! It’s so fast and easy to make anything you can imagine, and with files that are pre-made like the ones by Miss Kate’s Cuttables, you’ll be amazed at what you can create!

Ha! I crack myself up. I also assume that no one reads these things and I’m writing to myself. That’s why I thought it was so funny when Xyron shared my post about the Hanukkah table décor and mentioned my issues. Oh, my. I’m funny.

Anyway, tomorrow is my birthday and I thought that before I have too much fun I’d go ahead and get another post up about a little home décor project that I made this year. This fits in with my cheap and easy theme that is the story of my life right now, and I still feel like it’s got a lot of cute (which is still very important to me). Check it out!

It looks extra simple in these photos, but it really shines out on my buffet with my sparkly Christmas trees and other decorations, let me tell ya.

I combined some really pretty blue paper by Imaginisce, grey pearls by Studio Calico, chipboard letters and a fabulous flower from Maya Road, a $2 tray from Michael’s and a photo of my kids to make this little guy. Actually, it’s not really little. That is a 4×6 photo on there. The hardest part of this project is paying attention to your paper. The tray is too wide to cover with just one strip, so you have to cut two and the paper needs to be one that repeats so that you can line it up at the seam. There is a seam, yes, but if you’re careful it won’t really show. Mine is mostly behind the photo and I was careful to line up the pattern so it’s hard to see.

The tray was seriously that cheap at the store, and I added some white spray paint that I already had in the garage (I tend to work on a lot of projects with spray paint 🙂 Here it is before embellishing:

And the back has hangers so that you can use it in either direction. It’s actually a really nice little tray and you could do a ton of different things with it. I bought a second one when I was at the store recently and I can’t decide what I want to do with it. Too many options!

This was a very quick project to put together and I can always pop that photo off and replace it with an updated one every year if I want to. Or I can just buy a bunch of trays and line them all up on the wall to show off how they grow 🙂

I’m doing this again this year! I got too busy with my first semester back in college last year and ended up skipping it, but I’ve had do plan some other things ahead this year so I thought I’d get this album all ready to go for a month of fun stuff. A couple of months ago I was at Michael’s and saw these super cheap (like, $5) two-packs of chipboard albums. I bought a couple of them because I like to make minis, and I decided to use the largest one for my December daily. It ties shut and it has waterfall style pages inside. I’m really happy with how it turned out with just a little bit of planning. Let me show you the cover before I talk about the details though 🙂

Pretty and sparkly! Once I decided to do the December daily, I also decided that I wanted to make things as easy as possible on myself. I bought a stack of Christmas themed paper by Die Cuts With a View at Michael’s, and I got matching Thickers for the front title. Everything else was from my stash. I just didn’t want to spend a bunch of time pulling papers and coordinating it all. The stack made it easy. I would have preferred a paper pack with some extra matching stickers and embellishments, but I didn’t have the time to go over to the LSS and didn’t like what I was seeing online. Sometimes you just need to hold that paper in your hands to see whether or not you really love it 🙂 Let me show you what I mean now by “a little bit of planning.”

Once I decided that this was the album I was going to use, I went through and counted the number of pages. I knew that I’d be combining days onto each page, so I went through and marked them out for the different days. Some days I divided horizontally, some vertically, and for big days where I knew there would be a lot of photos (like Christmas) I saved a whole page. That’s all I did for planning. It really didn’t take long and it made things go really fast once I started sticking things together.

As for that, you know I stuck everything together with my Xyron goodies 🙂 The Creatopia was awesome for all these big pages and pieces of paper. I just ran everything through at once after I got all my papers cut for the pages. Step one (after planning) is to decide which papers you want to go where. Then I cut them to size and make them sticky. Taking photos of your planned layout helps because you won’t be able to see those pencil marks once your stuff is all attached over them. After that, I cut strips to use to divide up those pages, those are attached with Xyron as well. I had a bunch of different (mostly flat, so that the book will actually close) embellishments and I added them to the pages as I went along. The dates were added with a combination of cut out shapes from one of the papers in the stack, numbers from my pack of Thickers, and stamped, punched numbers. Let’s look at those pages!

See? Just a few embellishments per page.

Some things are stickers, some are punches, some are die-cuts. I left a full page for Christmas Eve (usually a big celebration at my brother and sister-in-law’s house). I didn’t put journaling pieces for each page, I decided that I would add those as I go. I’ll talk more about that in a second.

My plan is to take all my my photos this year on my iphone. I’ll probably use Instagram and then one of the printing services that a friend has used for their photos (need to look into those). Anyway, I’ll set reminders to take photos every day so that I don’t forget, and I’ll write a little something about those photos on a post-it note and stick it in the book. Then, I’ll put the photos I order and my notes together in the book once I have it all and I can be sure to have journaling spots that fit my needs. Make sense? Plus I’ll have more time after the month is over. Little work now and plenty of album enjoyment when the holidays are over 🙂

For more December Daily ideas, be sure to look around Pinterest and check out the queen of it all, Ali Edwards. I hope you like my little album and that you find an easy way to record your memories from this month!